CLASSIFICATION OF MINERALS. 34-3 



nave been the first person to see the immense value of the most marked 

 of external characters, crystalline form, he did not, in fact, attach much 

 importance to it. Perhaps he was in some measure fascinated by a 

 fondness for those characters which he had himself systematized, and 

 the study of which did not direct him to look for geometrical relations. 

 However this may be, the glory of giving to Crystallography its just 

 importance in Mineralogy is due to France : and the Treatise of Haxiy, 

 published in 1801, is the basis of the best succeeding works of minera- 

 logy. In this work, the arrangement is professedly chemical ; and the 

 classification thus established is employed as the means of enunciating 

 nystallographic and other properties. " The principal object of this 

 Treatise," says the author, 7 " is the exposition and development of a 

 method founded on certain principles, which may serve as a frame- 

 work for all the knowledge which Mineralogy can supply, aided by 

 the different sciences which can join hands with her and march on the 

 same line. It is worthy of notice, as characteristic of this period of 

 Mixed Systems, that the classification of Hatiy, though founded on 

 principles so different from the Wernerian ones, deviates little from 

 it in the general character of the divisions. Thus, the first Order of 

 the first Class of Haiiy is Acidiferous Earthy Substances ; the first 

 genus is Lime ; the species are, Carbonate of Lime, Phosphate of Lime, 

 Fhiate of Lime, Sulphate of Lime, and so on. 



Other Systems. Such mixed methods were introduced also into 

 this country, and have prevailed, we may say, up to the present time. 

 The Mineralogy of William Phillips, which was published in 1824, 

 and which was an extraordinary treasure of crystallographic facts, was 

 arranged by such a mixed system ; that is, by a system professedly 

 chemical ; but, inasmuch as a rigid chemical system is impossible, ami 

 the assumption of such a one leads into glaring absurdities, the system 

 was, in this and other attempts of the same kind, corrected by the 

 most arbitrary and lax application of other considerations. 



It is a curious example of the difference of national intellectual cha- 

 racter, that the manifest inconsistencies of the prevalent systems, 

 which led in Germany, as we shall see, to bold and sweeping attempts 

 at reform, produced in England a sort of contemptuous despair with 

 regard to systems in general; a belief that no system could be con- 

 sistent or useful ; and a persuasion that the only valuable knowledge 

 is the accumulation of particular facts. This is not the place U 



7 Disc. Prel. p. xvii. 



